Astro Mechanica Raising $250M to Power Data Centers With Jet Engines

Astro Mechanica, a developer of turboelectric supersonic jet engines, is raising $250 million in Series B funding. The startup plans to supply its engines to power-starved data centers and positions its technology as more efficient than the competing offering from rival Boom Supersonic. No lead investor, valuation, or closing date has been disclosed.

Company Background

Astro Mechanica was founded in 2021 by Ian Brooke and is based in San Francisco. The company builds propulsion and airframe technology for supersonic flight, and it graduated from Y Combinator's Winter 2024 batch.

Brooke moved from concept to working prototype in two months for $200,000, raised a round from Lowercarbon Capital by October 2022, and hired his first aerospace engineers by March 2023.

The company's engine, called Duality, uses a hybrid-electric design that functions as a turbofan at low speeds, a turbojet at near-supersonic speeds, and a ramjet above Mach 3. According to Lowercarbon Capital, adding an electric motor decouples energy extraction from propulsion, improving efficiency and flexibility across engine speeds and fuel ratios.

Defense is the company's anchor customer. The U.S. Air Force selected Astro Mechanica to build an engine for its Collaborative Combat Aircraft program, providing the range and onboard electrical power needed for sensors and autonomy. The company is using government R&D funding to advance its technology while de-risking its path to commercial supersonic flight, a strategy its backers compare to the early playbooks of SpaceX and Tesla.

Prior Funding

Astro Mechanica's Series A, a roughly $27.1 million round co-led by Andreessen Horowitz, Lowercarbon Capital, and Giant Step Capital, with participation from Alumni Ventures, closed around April 2025. United Airlines Ventures invested in August 2025.

PitchBook lists roughly $27.6 million raised from about 19 investors, including MaC Venture Capital, Neo, and Pax VC. Other trackers list additional backers, including American Express Ventures, Celesta, Electric Capital, Greylock, Prime Movers Lab, and Lightbank. At $250 million, the Series B would be roughly nine times the company's total disclosed funding to date.

Why It Matters

Data centers face a severe power bottleneck. Multi-year grid connection delays have pushed developers to bolt ex-airliner turbine cores onto mobile generator trailers, and even that supply is running short. Wood Mackenzie projects new gas turbine lead times stretching past 2029, and IEEFA reports backlogs of up to eight years in some regions.

This shortage has created demand for "aeroderivative" turbines, meaning jet engines converted into generators, a practice GE Vernova and Siemens Energy have run for decades using cores like the GE LM6000, itself derived from the CF6-80C2 commercial engine. GE Vernova's aircraft-derived turbine orders jumped 33% in 2025, even as on-site power costs run roughly double standard grid rates. The company is supplying turbines projected to generate close to one gigawatt for the Stargate data center in Texas, which serves OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank.

Astro Mechanica is entering a market that Boom Supersonic already occupies. Boom's 42-megawatt Superpower turbine runs on natural gas without requiring a water supply, addressing two major data-center constraints. Boom CEO Blake Scholl has said that the financing and first Superpower order will fund development of both the turbine and the company's Overture airliner. Boom is building a "Superpower Superfactory" and plans to scale to more than four gigawatts of annual capacity by 2030. Axios has framed Astro Mechanica's claim of greater efficiency than Boom as a direct competitive response.

Broader Implications

Aerospace engine makers are becoming power infrastructure suppliers. GE Vernova, Siemens Energy, and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries already sell turbines modeled on jet engines, while GE Aerospace, Howmet Aerospace, and Woodward sell land-based aeroderivative components. Even so, incumbent backlogs are opening space for venture-backed entrants. FTAI Aviation's president has said that converting a jet engine into a power turbine takes just 30 to 45 days, suggesting that turbines, not capital, are now the binding constraint on AI buildout.

Aeroderivative turbines offer fast start-up times and high power density in modular, trailerized designs suited to hyperscale timelines, but they face scrutiny over permitting, noise, maintenance, and emissions.

Cross-sector capital linkages are forming. Astro Mechanica now spans defense (through the Collaborative Combat Aircraft program), commercial aviation, and hyperscale cloud power, mirroring the same three-legged structure that Boom Supersonic is running. Other propulsion startups may adopt a "sell power now, fund the aircraft later" model as a new industry standard.

Emissions and permitting tradeoffs remain unresolved. Aeroderivative turbines run on a simple-cycle basis, which is less efficient than combined-cycle plants and typically requires selective catalytic reduction to meet NOx limits. While they avoid the heavy water draw of some alternatives, they face harder scrutiny on emissions and noise.